February 22/08 9:28 am - Geelong Tour: Stage 3 & Final GC

Posted by Editoress on 02/22/08
 

Geelong Women's Tour Australia

Report courtesy Gennie Sheer, Communications Director, Cycling Australia

Austrian Christiane Soeder (Cervelo - Lifeforce) has been crowned the 2008 Geelong Tour Champion after a strong performance in the opening time trial set her up with an unbeatable lead.

Soeder held a 25 second lead over Germany's Ina Teutenberg (Team High Road) going into today's 91.2 kilometre Barwon Heads stage contested over six laps of a 15.2km course in blustery conditions. Soeder suffered a mid race puncture but her team mates rallied to tow her back up to the bunch.

Teutenberg claimed the stage win (2:32:16) and ten second bonus with Soeder crossing five seconds later in 23rd place but it was enough for the Austrian to take the win. Her final race time of 4:41:14 gave her a winning margin of 10 seconds over her German rival with Sweden's Susanne Ljungskog (Menikini Selle Italia) third overall at 25 seconds.

"I am really happy," said 33 year old Soeder. "It was for me a big victory, the first time I could win a tour, but it was a victory for the whole team.

"It is not nice if you have a puncture, but my team did a great job today," she added.

In a reversal of yesterday's Stage Two placings, Teutenberg crossed the line ahead of her team mate Australian Oenone Wood, with Regina Schleicher (Equipe Nurnberger) third.

The final stage saw a series of early attacks but Cervelo LifeForce regained control on the final lap bringing the race back together at which point the Team High Road train went into action to set up their sprinters.

"It all worked out perfectly as we (Team High Road) had the right amount of people there in the end," said Teutenberg. "But I was kind of running out of gears and worried about getting past Oenone."

Team High Road's Linda Villumsen retained the lead in the Best Young Rider classification with her 11th placing overall while Wood was crowned the Sprint Queen of the Tour claiming 18 points from Teutenberg on 14 points.

Team High Road's sprint strength in the Geelong Tour marks Wood and Teutenberg as favourites for the opening round of the 2008 UCI Women's Road Cycling World Cup Series being staged at Waterfront Geelong this Sunday from 10.30am.

"I think we have ridden really well in the past two stages and it has given me a lot of confidence that all the girls are in really good shape," said Wood, the 2008 Australian road race Champion.

"Sunday's a new race and everyone gets fitter after every race, but we pretty much have someone for every situation so we should have a very good race," Teutenberg added.